The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  He had barely started the long trek back when he heard a distant sound. It was an engine. His heart skipped a beat as he imagined it was the pickup, but he quickly realized the sound wasn't that of a road vehicle. It was the throaty chatter of a helicopter, the beating of its blades echoing against the hills and growing more audible by the second.

  And then he saw it, recognizing the familiar silhouette slicing across the valley. It was a Bell UH-1611Y, a recent incarnation of the iconic workhorse of countless wars. Skimming the trees on the opposite ridge, it suddenly banked and was now headed straight toward him. He knew he'd been spotted. He felt his muscles tighten as he quickly ran through the possibilities of who could be on board: either Tess had done what she'd said she would do and alerted the authorities to his presence, or the shooters from the lake had found him. He sensed it was more likely to be the latter. He scanned the immediate surroundings, his mind coolly seeking out the most strategic points, but he decided against taking cover. They were armed and he wasn't and, besides, he didn't have what they were after. More to the point, he was tired and angry. He just didn't feel like running.

  He watched the helicopter circle overhead and saw the markings on its tail, a circular red and white bull's-eye-like insignia. He relaxed a little, realizing it was a Turkish air force chopper. It dropped down onto the clearing, kicking up a blinding cloud of sand and spray. Covering his eyes with his hand, Reilly approached it hesitantly. Its door slid open and through the shroud of dust, he saw a small figure moving lithely toward him over the rough ground. As he got closer, he could see that the man wore khaki cargo pants and a dark Windbreaker and sported sunglasses. The man was almost within touching distance before Reilly recognized De Angelis.

  "What are you doing here?" Reilly's eyes were darting around, taking in the helicopter, trying to make sense of the apparition. A dying gust from the rotor wash flicked back De Angelis's Windbreaker, and Reilly glimpsed a holstered Glock handgun under it. Momentarily stunned, he looked into the cabin, where he spotted the sniper rifle by the feet of a man who sat huddled there, lighting up a cigarette with the insouciance of a bored tour guide. Two other men, soldiers in Turkish military fatigues, sat across from him.

  Conflicting thoughts flooded his mind as he scrutinized the monsignor. He pointed at the chopper.

  "What is this? What the hell's going on?"

  De Angelis just stood there, impassive. As he took off his shades, Reilly noticed that the monsignor's eyes looked different. They held none of the self-effacing kindness that the priest had exuded in New York. The grimy spectacles he had always worn there had somehow concealed a menace that was now radiating unmistakably from him.

  "Calm down."

  "Don't tell me to calm down," Reilly burst out. "I don't believe this. You damn near got us all killed.

  Who the hell are you and where do you come off taking potshots at us? Those men back there are dead—"

  "I don't care," De Angelis snapped, interrupting him. "Vance needs to be stopped. At any cost. His men were armed, they had to be taken out."

  Reilly's mind was reeling in disbelief. "And what have you got planned for him?" he fired back.

  "You gonna burn him at the stake? What, are you lost in a time warp or something? The days of the Inquisition are over, Father. Assuming that's what you really are." He pointed at the sniper rifle by Plunkett's feet. "Is that standard issue in the Vatican these days?"

  De Angelis fixed him with an unwavering glare. "My orders don't just come from the Vatican."

  Reilly took in the army helicopter, the soldiers in it, and the civilian sitting with a sniper rifle by his feet. He had seen that cold, impervious look before. His mind raced through the events since the armed incursion into the Met, and suddenly the pieces fell into place.

  "Langley," he blurted out as he shook his head, staggered. "You're a goddamn spook, aren't you?

  This whole thing . . ." His voice trailed off before coming back assuredly. "Waldron, Petrovic . . .

  The horsemen in New York. It wasn't Vance. It was you all along, wasn't it?" He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing De Angelis and pushing him back with a hard shove. He moved in, reaching for the priest's throat. "You've been—"

  He didn't have time to finish the sentence. The monsignor reacted with lightning reflexes, deflecting Reilly's hands while grabbing one of his arms and twisting it in one fluid, agonizingly painful move, bringing him down to his knees.

  "I don't have time for this," he rasped, as he held Reilly at bay for a moment before flinging him off onto the ground. Reilly spat out the dirt in his mouth as the pain in his arm throbbed. The monsignor took a couple of steps, circling around the fallen agent. "Where are they? What happened here?"

  Reilly slowly pushed himself back onto his feet. He caught a glimpse of the man in the chopper, who was looking on with a mocking grin on his face. He felt a fury rising from deep within. If he had been wondering about the extent of the monsignor's personal involvement in the murders in New York, that little demonstration of the man's physical prowess quickly dispelled any doubts he might have had. He had seen it before; the man had hands that could kill.

  He dusted himself before staring at De Angelis. "So what are you exactly?" he asked bitterly. "A man of God with a gun, or a gunman who's found God?"

  De Angelis remained impassive. "I didn't have you down for a cynic."

  "And I didn't have you down for a murderer."

  De Angelis breathed out as he seemed to mull his response. When he finally spoke his voice was laced with indifference. "I need you to calm down. We're on the same side."

  "So what was that, back at the lake? Friendly fire?"

  De Angelis studied Reilly with cool, insolent eyes. "In this battle," he stated flatly, "everyone is expendable." He paused, seeming to wait for its significance to fully sink in with Reilly before continuing. "You've got to understand something. We're fighting a war. A war we've been fighting for over a thousand years. This whole notion of a 'clash of civilizations' . . . it's not just a fanciful theory coming out of some Boston think tank. It's real. It's happening as we speak, and it's growing, becoming more dangerous, more insidious, more threatening by the day, and it's not going to go away. And at its core is religion, because, like it or not, religion is a phenomenal weapon, even today. It can reach into the hearts of men and make them do all kinds of unimaginable things."

  "Like murder suspects in their hospital beds?"

  De Angelis let it go. "Twenty years ago, communism was spreading like a cancer. How do you think we won the Cold War? What do you think brought it down? The SDI, Reagan's 'Star Wars'? The Soviet government's stunning incompetence? Partly. But you know what really made it happen? The pope. A Polish pope, reaching out, connecting with his flock, getting them to tear down those walls with their bare hands. Khomeini did the same thing, broadcasting his speeches from Paris while he was in exile, igniting a spiritually starved population thousands of miles away, inspiring them to rise up and kick out the Shah. What a mistake that was, allowing that to happen . . . Look where we are today. And now, Bin Laden's using it too . . ." He paused, frowning inwardly, then fixed on Reilly sharply. "The right words can move mountains. Or destroy them.

  And more than anything in our arsenal, religion is our ultimate weapon, and we can't afford to let anyone disarm us. Our way of life, everything you've been fighting for since you joined the Bureau, hinges on it . . . everything. So my question to you is simple: are you, as your president once put it so eloquently, with us ... or against us?"

  Reilly's face hardened, and he felt his chest constrict. The wall of doubt he'd hastily erected was obliterated by the monsignor's mere presence. It was an unwelcome substantiation of everything Vance had said.

  "So it's all true?" he asked, as if emerging from a fog.

  The monsignor's answer came back dry and fast. "Does it matter?"

  Reilly nodded absently. He wasn't sure anymore.

  De Angelis looked around, scanning
the bare ground. "I assume you don't have it anymore?"

  "What?"

  "The astrolabe."

  Reilly was taken aback by the question. "How did you know about—?" he fired back, before his voice trailed off, realizing he and Tess must have been under audio surveillance the whole time. He went quiet and let his anger settle for a moment, then shook his head, dejected, and said, "They've got it."

  "Do you know where they are?" De Angelis asked.

  Reluctantly, and still deeply mistrustful of the monsignor, Reilly filled him in about what had happened the night before.

  The monsignor weighed the information somberly. "They don't have much of a head start, and we know the general area they're heading for.

  We'll find them." He turned, raising a hand and twirling it around, signaling the pilot to fire up the twin turbines, before glancing again at Reilly. "Let's go."

  Reilly just stood there and shook his head. "No. You know what? If it's all one big lie ... I hope it blows you all out of the water."

  De Angelis looked at him, thrown.

  Reilly held his gaze for a moment. "You can go to hell," he said flatly, "you and the rest of your CIA buddies. I'm out." And with that, he turned and walked away.

  "We need you," the monsignor called out after him. "You can help us find them."

  Reilly didn't bother turning around. "Find them yourself. I'm done."

  He kept walking.

  The priest's voice bellowed out after him, struggling against the growing whine of the chopper's engines. "What about Tess? You gonna leave her with him? She could still be helpful. And if anyone can get through to her, you can."

  Reilly turned, still walking, taking a few steps backward. He saw De Angelis's knowing glare, which made it clear the monsignor knew how close he and Tess had gotten. He just shrugged. "Not anymore."

  De Angelis watched him leave. "What are you going to do? Walk back to New York?"

  Reilly didn't stop. He didn't answer either.

  The monsignor called out after him one last time. His voice was now angry, and tinged with frustration.

  "Reilly!"

  Reilly stopped, dropping his head for a moment before deciding to turn.

  De Angelis took a few steps forward and joined him. His mouth shaped a smile, but his eyes remained bleak and remote. "If I can't convince you to work with us . . . maybe I can take you to someone who can."

  Chapter 71

  V atican or CIA, whoever made the travel arrangements had done a pretty good job. The helicopter had flown to a military air base near Karacasu, not far north from where Reilly had been picked up. Once there, he and De Angelis boarded a waiting G-IV, which had flown up from Dalaman to pick them up, and made the fast journey west to Italy. Immigration and Customs were swiftly bypassed in Rome, and, less than three hours after the monsignor had materialized out of a dust cloud in the Turkish mountains, they were speeding through the Eternal City in the cosseted comfort of an air-conditioned, black-windowed Lexus.

  Reilly needed a shower and clean clothes, but, as De Angelis was in a hurry, he'd had to settle for washing on board the jet and replacing his wetsuit with BDU pants and a gray T-shirt hastily obtained from the Turkish air force base's supply center. He didn't complain. After the wet-suit, the battle dress uniform was a welcome relief, and, more to the point, he was in a hurry too. He was feeling increasingly uneasy about Tess. He wanted to find her, although he tried not to delve too deeply into his motives. He was also having second thoughts about having agreed to the monsignor's invitation; he wasn't sure what awaited him at their final destination, and the sooner he was out of there and back on the ground in Turkey, he thought, the better. But it was too late to pull out. He had clearly sensed from De Angelis's quiet insistence that this visit wasn't just an idle whim.

  He had spotted Saint Peter's Basilica from the aircraft, and now, as the Lexus cut its way through the midday traffic, he saw it again, looming up ahead, its colossal dome soaring gloriously out of the haze and chaos of the congested city. Although the sight of such a prodigious edifice inevitably inspired feelings of awe in even the most hardened of disbelievers, Reilly felt only betrayal and anger. He didn't know much about the world's greatest church, beyond that it housed the Sistine Chapel and that it was built over the resting spot of the bones of Saint Peter, the Church's first pope, who had died there after being crucified, upside down, for his faith. As he looked at it, he thought of all the sublime works of art and architecture the same faith had inspired, the paintings, statues, and places of worship that had been created around the world by the followers of Christ. He thought of the countless children who said their bedtime prayers every night, the millions of worshippers who attended church services every Sunday, the sick who prayed for healing, and the bereaved who prayed for the souls of the departed. Had they all been deceived too? Was it all a lie? And, even worse—had the Vatican known all along?

  The Lexus made its way down the Via de Porta Angelica to the Saint Anne gate, where a large, cast-iron portal was opened by colorfully outfitted Swiss Guards just as the car reached it. With a quick nod from the monsignor, the Lexus was waved in, entering the smallest country on the planet and ushering Reilly into the center of his troubled spiritual world.

  The car stopped outside a porticoed stone building, and De Angelis promptly got out. Reilly followed him up the short steps and into the solemn hush of a double-volume vestibule. They walked briskly along stone-flagged corridors, through dim, high-ceilinged rooms, and up wide marble staircases, finally reaching an intricately carved wooden door. The monsignor put away his aviator shades and replaced them with his old tinted glasses. Reilly looked on as, with the ease of a great actor about to go onstage, De Angelis's expression morphed from that of a merciless covert operative into the gentle priest who had materialized that day in New York. To Reilly's added surprise, he took a deep breath before he rapped his knuckles firmly on the door.

  The answer came back quickly in a soft-spoken tone.

  "Avanti"

  De Angelis opened the door and led the way inside.

  The walls of the cavernous room were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling and overflowed with books. The herringboned, oak floor had no rugs. In one corner, by a stone fireplace, a large chenille sofa sat between two matching armchairs. Backing up to a towering pair of French windows was a desk, which had a heavily padded chair behind it and three wingback chairs facing it. The room's only occupant, a burly and commanding figure with grizzled gray hair, stepped around the desk to greet De Angelis and his guest. A somber severity was etched on his face.

  De Angelis introduced Cardinal Brugnone to Reilly, and the men shook hands. The cardinal's grip was unexpectedly firm, and Reilly felt he was being studied with an unsettling perspicacity as the old man's eyes moved over him silently. Without taking his eyes off his guest, Brugnone exchanged a few words in Italian with the monsignor, which Reilly couldn't make out.

  "Please sit down, Agent Reilly," he finally said to him, motioning toward the sofa. "I hope you will accept my gratitude for all that you have done and continue to do in this unfortunate matter. And also for agreeing to come here today."

  As soon as Reilly had taken a seat, and with De Angelis settling into another chair, Brugnone made it clear he was in no mood for idle chatter by coming quickly to the point. "I've been given some background information on you." Reilly glanced at De Angelis, who did not meet his gaze. "I'm told you are a man who can be trusted and who does not compromise his integrity." The big man paused, his intense, brown eyes bearing down on Reilly.

  Reilly was more than happy to dive straight in. "I just want the truth."

  Brugnone leaned forward, his large square hands pressed flat against each other. "I'm afraid the truth is as you fear it." After a quiet moment, he pushed himself out of his chair and took a few heavy paces to the French windows. He stared out, squinting against the harsh midday glare. "Nine men . . . nine devils. They showed up in Jerusalem, and Baldwin
gave them everything they wanted, thinking they were on our side, thinking they were there to help us spread our message." He chortled, a sound that in other circumstances might have been mistaken for a laugh, but which Reilly knew was an outward expression of a very painful thought. His voice lowered to a guttural grumble. "He was a fool to believe them."

  "What did they find?"

  Brugnone took a breath, a kind of inward sigh, and turned to face Reilly. "A journal. A very detailed and personal journal, a gospel of sorts. The writings of a carpenter named Jeshua of Nazareth." He paused, fixing Reilly with a piercing gaze before adding, "the writings . . . of et man.'"

  Reilly felt the air leave his lungs. "Just a man?"

  Brugnone nodded his head somberly, his big shoulders suddenly sagging as though an impossible weight was upon them. "According to his own gospel, Jeshua of Nazareth—Jesus—was not the Son of God."

  The words ricocheted around Reilly's mind for what seemed like an eternity before plummeting to the pit of his stomach like a ton of bricks. He lifted his hands, making a vaguely all-encompassing gesture. "And all this . . . ?"

  "All this," Brugnone exclaimed, "is the best that man, that mere, mortal, frightened man, could come up with. It was all created with the most noble of intentions. This you must believe. What would you have done? What would you have us do now? For almost two thousand years, we've been entrusted with these beliefs that were so important to the men who began the Church, and which we continue to believe in. Anything that could have undermined these beliefs had to be suppressed. There was no other choice, because we could not abandon our people, not before and certainly not now. Today, it would be even more catastrophic to say to them that it is all . . . " He struggled with the words, unable to complete the sentence.

  "A massive deception?" Reilly concluded tersely.

  "But is it really? What is faith, after all, but a belief in something for which there doesn't need to be any proof, a belief in an ideal. And it's been a very worthy ideal for people to believe in. We need to believe in something. We all need faith."